Salt Lake City (AP) – Utah becomes the first state to prohibit fluoride in public drinking water despite the widespread opposition of dentists and national health organizations.
Republican governor Spencer Cox said that he would sign laws that prevent cities and municipalities from deciding whether the mineral should be added to their water systems.
Fluoride strengthens the teeth and reduces the cavities by replacing the US centers for the control and prevention of diseases during normal wear. The addition of low fluoride to drinking water has long been considered one of the greatest achievements in public health of the last century.
Government researchers have found that the fluoridation of the community water prevents about 25% of the decay of tooth.
“We have proven evidence of the security and effectiveness of this public health initiative,” said Brad Kessler, President of the American Dental Association, from Denver. Caves could begin within months or years after the end of the fluoridation in children, said Kessler.
The ban is carried out weeks after the Federal Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has expressed skepticism about water fluoridation.
“It is not a bill that is so important to me,” added Cox, “but it is an invoice that I will sign.”
The legislators of Utah, which urged a ban, said that the introduction of fluoride in water was too high-priced. His Republican sponsor, Rep. Stephanie Gricius, has a recognized fluoride advantages, but said that it was a question of the “individual decision” not to have him in the water.
Cox said that he grew up like many people in Utah and grew up in a community that has no fluoridated water – or what he described as a “natural experiment”.
“You would think that you would see different results drastically if half the state does not get it. We didn’t see that, ”said Cox in a weekend interview with ABC4 in Salt Lake City. “So it has to be a really high bar for me when we ask people to become medically by their government.”
Some cities across the country have already removed fluoride from their water and consider other municipalities to do the same. A few months ago, a federal judge of the US environmental protection authority ordered to regulate fluoride in drinking water, since a high degree could be a risk of the intellectual development of children.
A teenager in Utah, who asked the legislator to adopt the legislation, described a medical emergency when the fluoride pump in Sandy, Utah, was missing in 2019 and published an excessive amount of mineral in the drinking water. The fluoride ill hundreds of residents and led many in Utah to move away.
According to the National Institutes of Health, it is uncommon for a high fluoridation in the water. The agency said that it was “practically impossible” to get a toxic fluoride dose made of water with standard levels of the mineral.
Kessler said that the amounts of fluoride added to drinking water have been reduced over time and are considered problematic below the level.
“Science proves that it is effectively reducing cavities with little or no risk of other problems,” he said.
He added that a ban in Utah could have a domino effect, with other legislation encouraged to follow complaints with fluoride bans in their states.
The opponents warned that it would affect residents with low incomes disproportionately that could rely on public drinking water with fluoride as the only source for preventive dental care. Families with low incomes may not afford regular dentist visits or fluoride tablets that some people buy in cities without fluoridation.
Fluoridation is the most cost -effective way to prevent tooth tax on a enormous scale, said Lorna Koci, who takes over the oral health coalition in Utah.
According to the centers for the control and prevention of diseases, Utah took 44th place in the nation for the percentage of residents in 2022. About two out of five inhabitants in Utah received fluoridated water from Community Water Systems.
In February, the city council unanimously adopted a resolution in Riverton, a suburb of Salt Lake City, to remove fluoride from the city’s public water systems. The voters in Brigham City, 59 miles (95 kilometers) north of the capital, beat in 2023 with a enormous lead of a measure that would have removed the mineral from its public water supply.
Of the 484 water systems in Utah, which reported data to the CDC in 2024, only 66 fluoridated their water, as an associated press analysis showed. The largest was the largest city in the state, Salt Lake City.
Rodney Thornell, President of Utah Dental Association, began to practice dentistry in a suburb of Salt Lake City before the city of Fluoride added to its water. His adult patients who grew up on site continue to receive many cavities, but younger patients who grew up with fluoride in the water are less, he said.
“If we want to continue eating sugar, we need fluoride.” Thornell said and found that the residents of Utah consume more than the national average of sweets and sugary drinks.
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Brown reported Billings, Montana.
